Regional Public Health hosts 2018 Australasian Tuberculosis Conference

For two days in Wellington 30 - 31 August 2018, researchers, clinicians, practitioners and policy makers will gather for a conference focused on tuberculosis.

Tuberculosis (TB) remains a cause of high health burden worldwide. TB is ranked as one of the top 10 contributors to mortality worldwide – in 2015, 1.8 million deaths were due to TB. Around 1200 new cases occur in Australia and 300 in New Zealand annually.

We are in a time of change for tuberculosis: new diagnostic techniques, treatment options and strategies for understanding and acting on tuberculosis epidemiology offer great promise, and the exciting goal of tuberculosis elimination is gradually taking shape.

The 2018 Australasian Tuberculosis Conference is therefore timely. Our overarching theme is “Winds of Change: Tools for TB Elimination”. Over 160 delegates, primarily from New Zealand and Australia, will join together to debate and discuss new areas of TB science, learn new techniques and practices, and develop networks to better improve and coordinate TB management across the region.

CONFERENCE THEMES

· Tuberculosis elimination, with a focus on low burden countries.

· Migration and other cross-border issues

· Latent tuberculosis infection

· Innovations in laboratory science, in particular the application of whole genome sequencing (WGS)

· Drug resistant tuberculosis

INTERNATIONAL SPEAKERS

· Dr Timothy Walker, John Radcliffe Hospital, University of Oxford: WGS for tuberculosis elimination

· Prof Ben Marais, Children’s Hospital at Westmead Clinical School, University of Sydney: childhood TB and natural history of disease

· Dr Chris Coulter, Director, Queensland Mycobacterium Reference Laboratory & WHO Collaborating Centre in Tuberculosis Bacteriology